Heat, Hummingbirds, and the Hazards of Creativity: Notes from the Torch
This morning began with clarity, the rare kind. A soft, cooling breeze slipped through the Ozark hills, and for a brief, holy hour the world felt fresh… and so did I. My mind was sharp, ideas were flowing, and the day looked full of possibility.
Then the heat arrived.
It’s astonishing how working outdoors in a hundred-degree Arkansas summer can drain the strength right out of you, not to mention the wits. In my case, I didn’t help matters by sitting in front of a torch that burns somewhere just shy of three thousand degrees. Lampworking is a hot job, I know, but someone has to do it. And that someone, for reasons I still don’t fully understand, is me.
I’ve been trying lately to start my mornings by blowing glass during the cooler hours, hours once reserved for riding Dominic, my Globe Vienna hybrid bike, along the Fayetteville trails. But today I pushed deeper and deeper into the rising heat, determined to make “just one more” hummingbird suncatcher. Then another. And another.
My studio, if you can call a garage outfitted with a torch, lights, and an oxygen concentrator a studio, provides shade from the sun but absolutely no mercy. In truth, it functions more like a small roasting oven, and I am the turkey. Each minute on the torch contributes another degree toward global warming, and that’s before I flip on my little woad-blue kiln.
Still, as I sat there shaping hummingbird after hummingbird, listening to the Carolina Chocolate Drops, something remarkable happened. My mind lit up. Ideas poured in all at once, eight full outlines for upcoming blog posts, a dozen concepts for longer pieces, and I even managed to map out what felt like my entire writing year. It was a manic surge of creativity, the kind that makes you wish for a dictation system attached directly to your torch.
But I didn’t have one. And as the heat rose, the creativity began to sweat out of me.
My head grew hazy. My body complained. Eventually, I slumped off the torch and stumbled back into the blessed sanctuary of a dark, air-conditioned room. I found refuge on the bed as a pounding headache announced the crash I had already predicted earlier that morning.
Heat and I have a long, complicated relationship.
As a child, I was constantly outside, hot or cold, rain or shine, it didn’t matter. My bike and I roamed the entire city of Springfield Missouri as if the world were ours to explore. One summer day when I was nine, after hours of pedaling in the 105-degree heat, something went wrong. My head throbbed. I felt chills though I was burning up. My body shook. I somehow made it home, collapsed onto the couch, and lay perfectly still for hours. I had suffered a heat stroke.
The sensations, the dizziness, nausea, the relentless pounding headache, etched themselves into my memory. I’ve never been the same since. These days, if the thermometer hits 90, Dominic the bike stays parked.
Today wasn’t as dramatic as that childhood episode, but it was close enough to remind me why I should know better. I shut down before the real danger set in, but I was humbled by how mentally drained I became. The outlines I had so brilliantly composed evaporated, rearranging themselves into a jumbled mess. My carefully crafted plan for the year drifted away like smoke.
This wasn’t even supposed to be today’s planned blog post. But I refuse to surrender to writer’s block, not this early in the game.
If anything, this whole little adventure taught me something important: I need a better system for capturing ideas before the heat vaporizes them. This provides the perfect excuse to explore a new gadget I’ve been wanting anyway, a smartwatch. And no, not an Apple. Gack! A friend calls them “wrist computers,” and honestly, the name alone appeals to the sci-fi mystic in me. If I’m going to spend long hours at the torch, a wearable assistant might be just the thing.
Of course, if money and technology were no object, Google Glass would be even better. But for a one-eyed person, that’s a whole other level of adventure.
It’s funny, my first smartphone was something I bought purely for my glass business. My Bluetooth earbuds? Also for glass. Once again, the torch is nudging me toward new tech. Funny how creativity shapes our habits, and our habits shape our tools.
Speaking of tools, I’ve also been contemplating a GoPro for filming glassblowing lessons for my YouTube channel. Yes, I could shoot video with my phone, my laptop, or even my Samsung NX300, but something in me wants a dedicated device. Maybe it’s professionalism. Maybe it’s curiosity. Maybe it’s just the thrill of buying a new toy, most likely.
But every toy has a price. At ten dollars a hummingbird, I’ll need to sell fifty of them at retail, or twice that wholesale, to buy the gadgets calling my name.
Which means one thing…
I better get back to the torch. The hummingbirds aren’t going to make themselves.